


Trigger Safety

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Frotting, M/M, Oral Sex, PWP, Rimming, Sappy Fluff, a criminal scarcity of dick in butt penetration, condom usage still following porn logic more than actual logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:43:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7319326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another snotacon PWP.  This time with getting to know each other in some cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, bottom Otacon, general doting upon nerds, dogs interrupting, and naked cereal-eating.  Don’t be fooled though it’s mostly filth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> L-Lewd.
> 
> This is so long it’s kinda more like three different smutty things bound together. YOLO.
> 
> A guide:  
> Chapter one – blowjob  
> Chapter two – rimming and fingering  
> Chapter three – mostly cereal and Talking ™

Hal is kneeling on the floor between Dave’s legs.

Dave is sitting on the sofa in his chilly little living room, in that cabin in Nowhere Alaska, and the room is dark because a bulb needs changing overhead. The tv is muted, but its light intermittently flashes in the curls of Hal’s mousey hair, on the surface of his glasses so at one moment Dave can see the hesitation in Hal’s eyes and the next it’s just tiny reflections and tv glare.

Hal has been staying here with him for… what? Three months? It’s not like Dave hasn’t picked up on the tension between them, but it is a small surprise that Hal’s the one acting on it. Dave never intended to. After all, Hal lost someone he loved at Shadow Moses and Dave is not good for Hal anyway; they can work as partners but Dave is filled with hatreds and evil deeds that Hal doesn’t need added to his own problems. With practicality, Dave chose not to complicate their circumstances.

Yet here Hal is, kneeling between his legs. Dave is shirtless, lounging, and Hal’s hands are on the carpet but his eyes keep flickering to the crotch of Dave’s sweatpants purposefully.

“What are you doing, Hal?” Dave asks finally, carefully uninflected, watching him.

“Uh. Well.” Hal swallows, then his eyebrows furrow a little and he mutters, “Christ, you know what I’m doing.”

Some air puffs out of Dave’s nose, not quite a laugh because… well, there is a strange seriousness to this awkwardness.

“You’re not interested,” Hal says flatly.

Dave thinks on his next words, watching the tv. “I guess it’s more like I want to know why you’re suggesting it.”

“Uh,” Hal says. “Appreciation? It’s not like I’m trying to pay you back or something creepy like that, though. I just… I wanted to try it. You’re very attractive, Dave. But I know it’s not much having me around.” He punctuates his rambling with an awkward laugh.

“That’s not true,” Dave says.

“Huh?”

“You’re not a burden, Hal. I like you.”

That startles Hal into meeting his gaze, which is quite firm and almost challenging, and Hal’s expression turns sheepish.

“Why are you doing this?” Dave asks again. It’s unfair, it’s putting Hal on the spot, but he needs to know.

“… Because I like you too, I guess,” Hal murmurs. “You’re, uh. You’re my friend.”

Dave smiles wryly. “You always give your friends blowjobs?”

Thankfully Hal laughs. “You’re my very attractive friend, Dave.”

His smile goes small and finally fades, and there’s a lot more to it than that. There’s a lot neither of them are saying, quiet nights of accidentally spilling secrets to one another, the willingness to risk their lives to have the other’s back, and so many unimportant daily moments piled up over three months in this little cabin, the banal intricacies of sharing a life with someone who has weaseled into a spot of importance in your brain.

There’s a lot this can become other than just bumbling sex between friends.

And yet. At this one moment, it would just be bumbling sex. Maybe that doesn’t have to be complicated.

It’s just a blowjob.

Dave leans back slowly, arms spreading across the back of the sofa, craving a cigarette.

“Go ahead,” he says finally.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Why the hell not. I’ll return the favor.”

Hal looks like it is fucking Christmas. He doesn’t waste much time either. His hands raise to Dave’s thighs, tentative but firm, and Dave has to admit that makes the muscles in his stomach tense, hotly interested.

He likes Hal.

In a charming gesture, Hal pushes up his glasses so they’re sitting atop his head and then returns his hands to Dave’s lap. A brief hesitation… then one palm presses gently against Dave’s crotch.

Dave’s eyes shift slowly between Hal and the television and back again, as Hal brings him to erection through his pants, awkward touches and finally kisses, his stubble sometimes pricking through the thin fabric. The heat in Dave’s groin is cloying and nice, his dick hard and very visible in his sweatpants now.

Then Hal presses his tongue to the bulge of the head, wetting through the fabric so it clings to Dave coldly, shuffling his lips there, and ok Dave is a bit impressed and also that feels very good. Hal’s mouth teases his length, jaw working with big wet open kisses, the fabric between them agonizing except where spit-wetted places stick to Dave and feel tantalizingly similar to skin on skin. Hal is breathing heavily through his nose, and finally his fingers curl into the elastic at Dave’s hips.

“Can I—“ Hal asks, looking up, and his lips are flushed like he’s been kissed silly.

Again Dave says, “Go ahead.”

Hal rolls down Dave’s pants until his dick is exposed, takes a moment to look at it in a ridiculous but very Hal sort of way. Hal’s tongue actually comes out to lick his bottom lip briefly, which might have been funny if it wasn’t… kind of hot. Dave spreads his legs, tries not to be self-conscious as Hal’s hand brushes through wiry pubic hair before getting a firm grip at his base. Then Hal’s pressing his tongue roughly across the head, lips encircling in a shallow hot kiss, and Dave juts out his jaw and lets out a heavy breath.

Fuck.

Hal has done this before. It’s not like blowjobs have ever been Dave’s favorite sexual activity in the world, but Hal is pretty good. And beyond that, Dave can’t stop thinking that this is Hal, his friend, and that fear of later regrets somehow makes his heart pound harder. Maybe he’s just that fucked up but heart-pounding is translating directly into lust and enjoyment right now.

Hal smatters kisses up and down his length, lips soft, and Dave thinks he can feel Hal’s pulse in the thumb pressing at his base near his balls. Maybe he’s just imagining that. He doesn’t get much chance to imagine more, because then Hal has worked his way back to the top and is taking Dave deeply into his mouth.

The television is long forgotten. Dave can’t seem to take his eyes away from Hal now, falling lower and lower down the dick in his mouth, pausing, his throat working, a low clicking noise like a cough, and then pulling up again, viscous spit glinting along Dave’s length in the tv light.

“Fuck,” Dave says out loud this time, and Hal is already going back down again but he makes a low humming noise as if in agreement.

Dave is very carefully holding still, doesn’t want to start fucking into Hal’s face like an idiot, but this maybe-wrong sex is definitely doing its job, sending disjointed pulses of pleasure shivering up Dave’s spine. He is suddenly very aware that he isn’t wearing a shirt, his hard stomach pushing out deep breaths. His nipples are pebbled, the house is cold. Is Hal into that sort of thing?

Should he even be thinking about what Hal is into?

Hal has fallen into a steady pace, getting deep, popping out wet noises whenever his lips meet Dave’s crown again. Dave can feel himself mounting towards climax, not really an urgent thing so much as a slow burn. Hal’s face is red, and Dave might have worried about him except he occasionally stops to lavish indulgent slurping kisses to Dave’s leaking head with a curl of his mouth that almost looks like a smile. Hal is enjoying this. He smears his lips through precum, the tip of his tongue prodding and exploratory, and Dave soon realizes Hal’s other hand is between his own legs, stroking at his jeans zipper.

Dave’s mind is wandering to anticipatory places, thinking about sucking Hal off to thank him. He wants to see Hal’s dick, he wants to know what sort of noises Hal makes when he’s coming undone. Fantasies are spiraling out of control in his brain, and maybe it’s the orgasm ebbing and flowing and cresting higher and closer but all of this is getting pretty intense. This pointless sex plan is going terribly.

This is not just a blowjob anymore, because when Hal takes him too deep and gags somewhat and has to pull up with thick strings of spit connecting him to Dave’s dick before severing them with a nervous tongue wiping his lips… when that happens, he looks up at Dave blearily through his hair and even though his chin is wet and sloppy, he looks very good to Dave in that moment. This is not just a blowjob, because Dave really wants to kiss him. Softly. On the forehead or somewhere. He wants to tell him ‘good job’ or something even more embarrassing.

Dave has fucked up.

But they’re finishing this, Hal is kissing down the side of his dick again, and it’s wet and messy until suddenly Hal laughs.

“No…” Hal croaks, his voice deep and rough. “Ridley please…”

And then a fucking dog bullies her way into Hal’s space.

Goddammit.

Dave no longer has a sled team, but there are Ridley and Carpenter, two very old huskies he hasn’t found homes for, and Ridley loves Hal more than breathing probably.

Dave gives her a soft but earnest nudge with his bare foot, his dick thrumming with frustrated energy.

“Gettout,” he grunts, sounding equally wrecked.

She smiles dopily at them and it takes a lot of “Get outs!” before she finally, beatifically leaves

In the intermission, Hal takes his hand away from Dave to wipe off his mouth, and he also frowns somewhat, watching Dave’s face.

“Dave… Are you ok?”

Dave meets his gaze, his heart hammering.

“Yeah,” Dave says. This is the part where he should probably end this.

But Hal wants this sex, a lot, Dave can see it behind the concern in his eyes, and Dave wants it too, also a lot.

They have both fucked up.

“Hal…” Dave is going to say something stupid. “Can I see you naked?”

He is suddenly running headfirst into this stupidity, and his reward is Hal’s deep flush.

“Uh, don’t you want to--?” Hal gestures lamely to Dave’s reddened erection.

“I’d rather we finish it up together.”

“Oh.”

“I want to touch you too, if that’s alright.”

Hal swallows and wipes again at his face even though he’s already cleaned the worst of the spit off.

“Uh,” Hal says. “I’m not much to look at.”

As if that matters. Dave just watches him, and then Hal starts undressing in front of him.

It is not a sexy undressing, it is quick and awkward because clearly Hal is also careening headfirst into stupidity, but Dave enjoys it. In the meantime he wiggles out of his sweatpants and lets them pile to the floor. He wasn’t wearing underwear.

They both move for each other at the same time and wind up half-tumbling to the floor and Dave asks “Can I kiss you?” and Hal answers by kissing him, tasting like precum.

Hal said he isn’t much to look at, but to Dave he is satisfyingly exactly what Dave would expect. It’s not so much that Dave had imagined perfectly the spotty hair on Hal’s chest or the large freckle above one nipple or his particularly boney clavicle—it’s more that Dave sees these things and absently thinks “yeah, that seems like Hal.” They slot into place as part of his friend, his whatever-they-are, but it’s not like he’s really taking much time to look at the moment because they’re kissing each other fervently on the carpet.

After breathless negotiations, they wind up jerking each other off, both of them too high-strung for theatrics at this point, and Hal’s panting becomes noisy. The sounds he makes are better than Dave’s little imaginings. Orgasm has gone from slow burn to definitely urgent, and their grips become clumsy on each other’s dicks as they press their bodies together and rut desperately closer to that finish. Hal’s body is so hot beside him, somehow hot and goosebumpy at the same time, and his dick twitches in Dave’s hand, thick and hard and making Hal’s breath all choppy, his throat still raw and gravelly. Dave watches his face, the way Hal’s forehead creases almost imperceptibly and his teeth graze his swollen bottom lip. Hal finally cums with a loud deep “ah!”, mouth falling open, head conking back on the floor, glasses clattering, hot cum on Dave’s hand and against his thigh.

Dave does not take long after that, to say the least. It’s a rough orgasm, it tears through him and makes him double over, and Hal is still panting near his ear through it all, breath hot on Dave’s shoulder. Then they curl around each other with absent fumbling touches, dazed and still stretching through those last tingling sparks of intensity.

“Wow,” Hal says at last, and then they both laugh a little.

It’s the start of a new routine.


	2. Chapter 2

Eating someone out with proper enthusiasm always produces awful noises.

Dave is fully aware of the wet pops and smacks of his mouth and tongue lavishing Hal’s ass, and Hal would probably be embarrassed by them if he wasn’t so busy biting the pillow and making some nice noises of his own. Dave won’t admit he was actually thinking about this when he shaved this morning, the opportunity of pressing his face to Hal’s ass, not necessarily anticipating it but perhaps hoping. Every so often hope pulls through.

Not only that, this is apparently Hal’s first time receiving anal attention. Dave was secretly very pleased to hear that.

Hal’s skin is warm from his shower, mostly dry now but with the memory of water, and his hair is wet and darkening a wet circle into the pillow case, but Dave can’t really witness all that at the moment because ass.

It is strangely reminiscent of kissing, very soft skin butterflying against very soft skin, but Dave is also pressing his tongue inside through a vaguely rubber-tasting condom and there’s nothing quite comparable to the tip of your tongue forcing its way past muscle and eliciting such delicious shivers in your partner’s thighs under your hands. Hal is stroking himself not far from Dave’s work, and his legs keep shaking as if his knees are going to give up on him. Mostly Hal is just breathing heavily, but sometimes his voice breaks into it, tiny pleasured sounds turning the exhales into almost-moans through his teeth, and that reminder that this is Hal he’s making feel good is something extra. It makes Dave rock hard in his pants and eager to stretch this moment out as long as possible.

After a particularly filthy slurp, he pulls back and trails teasing kisses across the cheeks of Hal’s ass instead, earning a frustrated orgasm-craving “nngh” noise from Hal. Hal’s hips are bony and Dave gently bites the taut skin. Hal is pumping himself in earnest now, the small of his back dipping involuntarily and his ass pressing needily against Dave’s face. Dave finds himself smiling as he presses the tip of his middle finger into Hal’s hole, hooking inside the condom.

Hal breathes out a ragged “oh fuck, please,” against the pillow, and Dave eases in just to the first knuckle, they haven’t used lube, but that seems to be enough for Hal to choke out another sharp swear and buck.

Dave has reached his threshold for sexual altruism, and removes his finger and the condom, fumbling with the zipper of his jeans. He hooks his pants and underwear under his own ass and presses his very-fucking-hard-thanks dick into the crease between Hal’s cheeks, wet from spit and previous workings. Hal moans fervently, not even caring anymore about embarrassment or demureness, and Dave rubs back and forth against Hal’s ass, not penetrating just rubbing, and watching himself coupled with Hal’s writhing underneath him is coiling up an orgasm in his lower stomach real fast.

“Put it in me, please,” Hal says, voice cracking impressively, and Dave folds over him to kiss at the nape of his neck and murmur “Can’t, you’re not ready yet.” That doesn’t stop him, though, from thrusting against Hal for all he is worth and holding him tightly and kissing sloppily against his jaw. Hal might have protested except he’s wrapped up entirely in his own mounting climax, and his breaths puff out shallow and urgent and wonderful, snagging noisily in his throat. Then finally Hal stiffens and shudders underneath him, arm stopping, cum smattering the sheets, and Dave pulls back, panting, to jerk himself to completion and watch his own cum paint a lewd picture across Hal’s vertebrae.

Hal collapses onto his stomach and Dave rolls to the bed beside him, pushing the hair out of Hal’s face with the heel of his palm. Hal’s mouth is open, his eyes shut, his face red-cheeked, looking like he enjoyed that very much.

But it’s nice to hear such things out loud, so Dave asks breathlessly, “You like it?”

Hal laughs, smooshes his cheek into the pillow. “Holy shit, Dave.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I… Man, I really thought you were gonna put it in me there.”

“And you liked the idea?”

“I went crazy just thinking about it.” Hal opens his eyes but doesn’t quite meet Dave’s gaze, smiling but with some post-coital self-consciousness involved. “You’re right though I don’t think that would have ended well.”

“But it’s something you’d consider.”

“Fuck,” says Hal appreciatively. For a long moment they just lay there with their faces very close and warm, Hal gazing off at some distant thought in the sheets, and then finally Hal’s gray eyes meet Dave’s and crinkle a little with a deepening smile. “What if we tried it right now?” he asks, boldly but with an underlying shyness that Dave doesn’t miss.

Dave laughs. “I need some time to reload first.”

“Ha ha. Right.”

But Dave also wiggles out of his pants and underwear and kicks them across the room to signify that yes, if the activities continue that would be fantastic. Hal helps him with his t-shirt, kissing tiredly but appreciatively across Dave’s pecs. His finger teases at the hair at Dave’s nipple.

For awhile they catch their breath, sometimes kissing, sometimes talking, sometimes just lying there in muggy contented silence.

Then Dave is ready.

Hal is half-hard again just from the cuddling (he has some unexpected stamina in these situations), and Dave crawls to the foot of the bed again, but not before propping some pillows under Hal’s hips. Hal laughs at having his ass elevated so deliberately, but Dave says “Your knees are going to thank me.”

Then he’s behind Hal again, and Hal’s almost casually resting against his wet head-pillow and watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting.

Dave fishes a sticky, somewhat bent tube of lube from the bedside table.

“Prep is important,” Dave says, and it sounds almost like he’s debriefing him, which makes a sly smile spread across his face at his own private joke. “Fingers first, alright? I’ll tell you whenever I’m about to do something, and if it’s ever too much just tell me to stop.”

“Alright,” says Hal, sounding a combination of very eager and also nervous.

Dave kisses his still pink ass to soothe him, but also because Dave likes this ass and it probably deserves kisses every now and then. Then Dave squeezes a generous helping of lube onto his fingers.

“You ready?”

“…Yeah.”

“It’s gonna be cold.”

Dave lubes up his index finger liberally and presses into Hal easily, despite Hal swearing because yes, indeed, it is cold.

“Alright?”

“Yeah… It doesn’t hurt, it’s just kinda weird.”

“It’s different,” Dave agrees, and starts a gentle probing, rolling the knob of his knuckle in and out at Hal’s opening. Hal’s hand flexes at the pillow, and Dave turns his finger and sinks deeper and… tries. A little curl at the tip of his finger, a come-hither motion, trying, shifting and trying again…

“Oh fuck,” Hal gasps. There we go.

Dave keeps at this angle and teases Hal’s prostate, a careful but deep prodding, and Hal’s breath gradually goes shallow and heavy. His eyes roll up slightly before he closes them and makes this little frown he does sometimes when he’s feeling good, as if concentrating on the pleasure.

“Good?” Dave asks, a little cockily because he damn well knows it’s good, and Hal makes a keening noise.

“I’m going to put in the next finger now,” Dave says, and squirts more lube onto his knuckles before pressing his middle finger in along the first, slowly. There’s more resistance, Dave’s fingers aren’t thin, but Hal’s moan in response still sounds pleased. In, out, slow, deep. Dave’s own dick is coming to attention again, watching the wet reddened skin of Hal’s ass cling to him and listening to Hal’s gasps.

“Gonna cum,” Hal chokes, his voice muffled by pillow.

“We’re not done yet,” Dave chastises, planting a kiss just above his tailbone. “Do you want to try another finger?”

“Oh fuck, please.”

That’s where it starts to get tricky. 

Just at the fingertips, the resistance is pressing back now, and Hal makes a guttural noise that’s part lust but part discomfort. He’s really high strung, a bit of pain isn’t going to change that, but that’s exactly the point of playing around when dumb mistakes can happen so Dave stops and kisses him again.

“Alright?” Dave asks.

“Yeah… Yeah, just…” Hal grunts in a frustrated way. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

Dave sinks in slowly, a wet stretch and burn, and holds Hal’s hips firmly with his other hand because the muscles in Hal’s thighs are twitching and wanting to buck ever so slightly back and forth. As Dave goes deeper, though, these inadvertent motions cease. Hal is calming down, and the noises he’s making have become appropriately irritated and impatient.

“Losing the edge, huh?” Dave asks, almost conversationally as he turns his fingers carefully inside of him, a squelching sound coming from the excess lube all puddled in his palm.

“I don’t know,” Hal says, breathless and also borderline whining, frustrated by a maddening paradox of being close to cumming and yet not close enough that it’s within reach anymore.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Are you alright?” Dave asks.

Hal breathes for a long moment, face in the pillow.

“Hal.” Dave presses.

“… I don’t know.”

With a sigh Dave gently pulls out, stroking Hal’s thigh encouragingly with a wet hand.

“I wanna cum but I don’t think I can take a whole dick,” Hal says, sounding rather despondent.

“Most people can’t do it that quick,” Dave says, but he knows Hal is irritated with himself because Hal finds a way to be a perfectionist about everything in the universe. Also Hal is pointedly silent, and Dave wipes his hands on the sheets.

“It’s alright, Hal.”

More silence, and with some exasperation Dave slowly bats away the pillows under Hal’s hips so he’s flat on his stomach then urges him to roll over. It’s a bit of work because Hal is clearly moping.

Once Hal is on his back, though, Dave crawls over him and kisses his mouth with much gusto and appreciation. Tongues, lips, familiar kisses that have learned how to cater to each other’s favorite tricks now.

A little laugh makes Hal’s throat rumble, and when Dave pulls back Hal murmurs “Guh, wasn’t your tongue in my ass a minute ago?”

Dave swipes a lick across Hal’s lips joshingly, and Hal cries “Nasty!” but he’s laughing breathily and his arms wrap around Dave’s shoulders and pull their chests together.

They are both very hard, and their dicks are pressed lazily together between them, sending nice thrumming pleasure through Dave’s pelvis. Hal makes an “mmm” sound, clearly also enjoying this.

“Sorry,” Hal says. He really had his heart set on that fuck, huh.

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Dave tells him, and to accentuate the point he rocks his hips and rubs their lengths together firmly. “I like this too.”

“The legend is surprisingly un-picky,” Hal says with a toothy smile.

“I’m un-picky with you,” Dave corrects, and starts a slow but hard pace grinding against him. Hal’s hips rise up to meet his thrusts, until they’re rolling against each other in messy tandem, and Dave wraps an arm around Hal, the other arm stabilizing somewhere on the pillow above Hal’s head, and they kiss again luxuriously. Hal is skinny and boney under him, chest flat and sharp under Dave’s, and he’s also warm and everything Dave wants in this moment. 

They kiss and rut and hold each other, murmuring filthy things. Dave tells Hal exactly how he would fuck him, exactly how hard Hal would scream, and Hal is moaning full force again, saying “fuck me, fuck me,” the muscles in his belly spasming against Dave’s. Dave cums first this time, with a rough groan, feeling droplets cling hot to the hair on his stomach. He reaches between them to help finish Hal off, relishing the way Hal squirms under him, caged in his arms and under his muscular weight. Hal keeps saying “fuck me, fuck me,” somewhat silly perhaps at this point but it’s hot and it’s driving Hal wild, and when Hal finally comes his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth hangs open wordlessly for a long moment before a cracking “uhhn!” sound scrapes out of him. Dave enjoys it a lot.

Then they’re laying side by side on the bed again, now with another sheen of sweat and sex-smell surrounding them and also a pair of dopey smiles that are only not embarrassing in the current circumstances.

“I guess we can work up to it,” Hal says, still fixated on anal it seems.

“There’s no rush, Hal,” Dave says. “There will be plenty of times.”

They haven’t really talked about that, but Dave does expect plenty of times in the future at this point. There have been plenty of times already, so why not more? At the very least, he is game for them. Hal, however, looks a little stunned for a moment, and Dave realizes with a bit of sadness that Hal’s self-deprecation often translates to not believing in guarantees.

But then the relieved smile Hal flashes him is very nice.

Just this once, Dave decides to tell him so. He traces a finger into the divot of Hals’ cheek and says honestly, “That’s a good smile.”

“Stop,” Hal says, snorting, but the smile gets bigger. He hides it in the pillow.

Dave smiles too.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they do get to full blown anal it quickly becomes one of their favorite activities. Another plus of living alone out here is that if Hal wants to bend over the kitchen table and have Dave fuck him for all he’s worth, they can be impulsively unsanitary and do that to their hearts’ content.

Hal’s sex noises have progressively grown bolder at Dave’s encouragement, and now they both cause quite the impressive rackets, which sometimes gets the dogs to barking and likewise makes them laugh and lose focus. But only for a little while before Dave’s hips are slapping against Hal’s ass again and they’re engrossed in each other once more.

After this particular kitchen fuck session, Dave meticulously cleans the table as Hal takes a well-earned rest, sitting on a kidnapped sofa pillow on one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs, still naked with a glass of water and a dazedly pleased look on his face.

The clothes business keeps getting delayed. When the table’s clean, they both decide they’re hungry, so Dave pours them some Cheerios and they sit naked at the table on cushion and kitchen towel respectively, as if that makes much of a sanitary difference. Dave has learned that Hal likes a lot of milk on his cereal, whereas Dave prefers his crunchy.

Hal’s hair is a sweaty mess and he takes big bites, the corners of his eyes always pinching slightly when he doesn’t have his glasses on, creases like crows feet. Dave watches him and tells himself that this feeling of complete rightness, like everything is in its exactly proper place despite the ridiculousness of the situation, is just a side-effect of getting off, and not related to the way that the scruff on Hal’s chin has gone from awkwardly sparse and unattractive to a detail of Dave’s life that he secretly cherishes.

“Should we talk about this?” Dave asks suddenly.

“Hmmm?” Hal blinks at him sleepily.

“We just fucked on the kitchen table.”

“I don’t mind,” Hal says absently, mouth half-full. Dave just waits for the gears to turn and then Hal’s orgasm-addled brain finally gets it. “Oh. The fucking.”

“Yeah.”

Hal swallows and squints at him, making Dave wonder exactly how bad his eyesight really is. What’s Dave look like to him now? Probably a sexed up mess either way.

“Is there a problem?” Hal asks slowly.

“No,” Dave says immediately and Hal relaxes. “I was just wondering if we should talk about it.”

Hal considers this, stirs his Cheerios, takes another large bite to tide him over while considering more.

“Should we?” Hal says.

“I was asking you.”

“No, I mean… If it’s not broke, why fix it?” He gestures his spoon in a little bob in the air.

That makes sense. Too much sense, maybe. They still haven’t talked about the fact that this isn’t entirely casual, but keeping it fake-casual indefinitely does seem like a possibility, they have work to do after all, but it still doesn’t always sit quite right.

This chilly house of Dave’s feels better with Hal in it. Dave was always fond of this place, for the reclusion of nature and the companionship of his absurdly many dogs, but now it’s more like he’s growing an affection for it as _their_ house, their little hideaway. They might be staying together for a long time as this anti-Metal Gear idea grows, as their contacts finally coincide and funnel in, and that concept is uncomfortably nice. He enjoys living with Hal like this, fucking him whenever they feel like it.

“You’re sexy,” Dave tells him.

“What’s with you all of the sudden, geez.”

“I mean it.”

Hal levers his spoon and leans on his elbow, blushing a bit but also frowning. “Dave, what’s wrong?”

Nothing. Nothing is wrong but that also means that everything is wrong.

What the hell.

Hal is sexy though, so Dave watches him, mouth pressed thin.

“You’ve got a bruise just down there in the hollow of your throat and it’s sexy,” he says. “I put it there on purpose.”

“I know, I let you,” says Hal. Dave can see in the chagrin on Hal’s face that this conversation tactic is working. Hal wants to hear more. Hal will never admit it, but being assured he is likable is something he always craves.

“I like your voice after we have sex,” Dave continues. “I like your voice in general.”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s these freckles I always kiss down by your ass because they’re begging for it.”

“That’s nice.” Hal’s face is very red now.

“I like you a lot, Hal,” Dave finishes.

Hal watches him shyly up through the hair on his forehead. “You’re messing me up a little.”

“Sorry.”

“I like you a lot too, Dave.” Hal pauses, eyes tracing Dave as if looking for specifics to point out too, but then an unreadable sort of softness comes to his expression and he looks down at his cereal. “You’re a good man.”

How can Hal just bowl over their façade that casually?

Dave’s jaw works and finally he sighs. “I don’t want to do anything wrong,” he admits. There it is.

“You aren’t,” says Hal. There it is also.

Slowly it dawns on Dave that, although this was never that casual, perhaps from Hal’s end it wasn’t even trying to be.

Dave drinks the last of his cereal milk and gets up to put his bowl in the sink, but also to step over to Hal because he very much needs to kiss him now, deeply but softly, not for another round of sex but just because he wants to. Hal returns the favor eagerly.

“I’ll get us some clothes,” Dave says, knowing uncomfortably well that this tender emotion welling up in his chest must be painted clear as day on his face. Hal smiles at him, small and knowing.

“I want one of your sweatshirts,” Hal demands.

“That’ll be a little big,” Dave says.

“That’s why I want it,” Hal shoots back, almost affronted, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world.

Dave smiles crookedly, his heart tapping fast against his ribs.

He gives in and kisses Hal chastely on the forehead. “Coming right up.”

As Dave leaves the room, Hal looks very at home there with his cereal, naked and gangly, and Dave thinks perhaps he himself is at home as well.

Perhaps that doesn’t have to be a problem, at least not now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus the cycle of smut concludes.


End file.
